Wednesday, September 30, 2015

A hate-fest at the British Labour Party conference

Everything in Brighton seems to be turning pink, and not just the Moon. Labour’s conference is in the grip of red-threaded, Marxoid ab-dabs. The oratory here is hyperbolised in its fury, quite possibly a bit bonkers.

Broad-bellied blokes spank spadelike palms over their heads, so hard it’s a wonder they don’t bruise them. The Tories were more than once yesterday compared to Nazi concentration camp guards. Big business was slandered. Sloganeering was denounced – with slogans!

Cue numerous mentions of Mrs Thatcher and the Eighties. We had a 75-year-old man wearing a coal-miner’s helmet with ‘Coal Not Dole’ stickers. Did he get it from the wardrobe mistress at West End musical ‘Billy Elliot’?

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, in carmine-shaded tie, gave a speech so lacking in theatricality, it actually became rather fascinatingly theatrical. Mr McDonnell flexed his jaw muscles, ground his molars, stared at the TV cameras as though about to butt them. Alex Ferguson after a Man United defeat.

Gosh he was furious. Albanian newscasters in the Enver Hoxha days were more skittish.

He warned delegates that it was going to be a speech unencumbered by his usual ‘rants’. ‘There’s no jokes – they get me into trouble,’ he said. In truth, Mr McDonnell has never been Jimmy Tarbuck.

He proceeded to intone a brief, blunt statement of intentions, including an ‘aggressive’ (yet unspecified) balancing of the books. Menace swirled around him like cigar smoke.

He coldly said how ‘disappointed’ he was that some Labour MPs had declined to serve on Jeremy Corbyn’s frontbench. Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper & Co should maybe avoid any men with sharp-ferruled umbrellas.

Happily, other comrades were prepared to be heroes of the Revolution. Mr McDonnell named certain economists who would be assisting his great project. And all hail former Civil Service chief Bob Kerslake, who had agreed to look into firing squads at the Treasury to exterminate wrong thinkers, or something like that. Can this be the same bumbling, bungling Bob Kerslake whose recent departure from Whitehall was a source of hat-hurling relief to his fellow Permanent Secretraries? It can!

For all the stuff about ‘new politics’, the language was prosaic. Mr McDonnell envisaged a ‘concrete alternative for a green economy’. There was a lazy riff about ‘the skills, development and innovation critical to compete in a globalised economy’. ‘Let me make this absolutely clear,’ he said, before being opaque on his tax-raising plans.

The tone was that of a Soviet tractor factory superintendent. His final word? ‘Solidarity!’, shouted with a clenched fist.

Earlier we had heard from dimpled charmer Diane Abbott. She was wearing a Guantanamo Bay orangey-red trouser suit, possibly a size or three on the small side. Front row spectators would have been well advised to shield their eyes in case a button pinged off its moorings like a sniper’s bullet.

Sister Abbott, a supporter of private education, complained in pukka accent about the Tories’ ‘callous’ attitude to the poor, particularly with regard to foreign aid. Eh? David Cameron has spent billions on aid.

Abbott

As Miss Abbott stomped back to her chair she had her right ear nibbled by sometime swoon Mr Corbyn. And a woman with copper-washed hair, first name Sioux (as in Red Indians), announced that Jeremy Corbyn gave ‘wonderful hugs’. Of the Government’s proposal for a Bill of Rights she said, ‘we might as well walk into the gas chambers today’. Mr Corbyn enjoyed that remark so much, he snogged her, too. He’s a hands-on leader.

That was not the only Nazi allusion. Union heavy ‘Red Len’ McCluskey, the grey-stubbled Obi Wan Kenobi of Corbynism, fulminated about the ‘Fascist dictatorship’ of David Cameron. He compared Tory reforms on strike ballots to Hitler’s imposition of red-triangle badges on inmates of Dachau concentration camp. Having got that off his chest, Mr McCluskey came over all Basil Fotherington-Thomas and started to quote poetry by Emily Dickinson

Former MP Candy Atherton, in a red dress, hit some sort of pothole on stage with her wheelchair. ‘I’m stuck!’ she squealed. Miss Atherton had just given a speech which suggested that the Tories could take us back to the days of 18th century slavery. Messrs Corbyn and McDonnell attended her stalled vehicle like a couple of AA mechanics.

The moment of the day? A speech by Lloyd Duddridge from Ilford, north London. Addressing delegates as ‘fellow fighters’, Mr Duddridge called for a social ‘safety net’ for workers who took risks. Who could he mean? ‘People trying to write a bloody book,’ he said. Writers of the world, unite. In a summons that will resonate with Mr Corbyn’s friends at the Guardian and the BBC, this Duddridge cried: ‘We need to take that fight to our dinner parties!

The military readiness of the United States is being “degraded by social experimentation,” Maj. Gen. Robert Dees (U.S. Army-Ret.) said Saturday at the Values Voter Summit in Washington.

Dees said that the Obama administration’s use of the military for “social engineering” on controversial gay and gender issues is detrimental to the nation’s ability to defend itself.

“Not only are we losing physical readiness to fight, we have to fix the problem of moral readiness,” he said on a panel chaired by Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin (US Army-Ret.).

“I think the moral readiness of our forces is even more important than the physical readiness, which is very low,” Dees later told CNSNews.com. “The moral readiness is degraded by social experimentation within our military.

“In fact, social experimentation is improperly named because it’s not an experiment at all. It’s a top-driven mandate for social agendas that occurs by this administration within the military, which is a captive audience.

“It is not enhancing our readiness; it declines our readiness. We’re spending more time on some of these social engineering projects than we are on developing and maintaining readiness in our force.”

CNSNews.com asked Dees what message President Obama’s nomination of an openly gay secretary of the Army sends to members of the military, especially those who are Christians.

“Well, I think it’s a very loud statement by the administration. It’s not an accident. We respect all people and yet, it’s tantamount to lighting the White House in rainbow colors,” he replied.

The general added that “even though there’s some guidelines in place, there’s guerilla warfare within the military in a similar way that there’s guerilla warfare within our culture.

“People who would seek to strike religion from our land are working very aggressively out in the various parts of the military to strike down religious freedoms even if it’s against the existing regulations. They will press and push for whatever they can get away with.”

The inevitable result of such conflict is “a rash of poor leaders, and in many cases toxic leaders within the military,” Dees said. “Young people are not seeing selfless servants…the very best of our officers are the ones who leave first.”

“Faith in the foxhole is critically important,” the general added. “We in the military know that [the troops] don’t want to be politically correct, they want to be God correct.”

EACH YEAR, THE United Nations General Assembly passes a resolution condemning the US economic embargo on Cuba. Each year, the United States, joined by a dwindling number of friends, votes against the resolution. Passage is a foregone conclusion. The vote last year was 188-2.

The resolution has no legal effect. It is merely a vehicle for inveighing against Washington, and for pretending that communist Cuba’s long record of economic failure and human-rights abuse is somehow the fault of the United States.

For 23 years, under Republican and Democratic presidents, the United States has opposed the antiembargo measure. But now comes word that the Obama administration may abstain from this year’s vote, an unprecedented step. “It is unheard-of for a UN member state not to oppose resolutions critical of its own laws,” the Associated Press reported last Monday, and some congressional leaders are aghast that President Obama would consider shirking his sovereign obligation to defend US interests before the world body. Even if he favors repealing the Cuban embargo (which President Bill Clinton signed in 1996), it remains the law of the land. Until that changes, says outgoing House Speaker John Boehner, the president has a “responsibility to defend US law, and that’s what [he] should do.”

An abstention on the UN vote would be in keeping with this administration’s practice of flouting, ignoring, or refusing to defend provisions of law it finds inconvenient, in matters ranging from immigration to health insurance to recess appointments to marriage. It isn’t only Republicans or conservatives — or lawmakers — who have objected to Obama’s presidential overreach. You can agree with the president’s position that a statute ought to be repealed or amended, while still expecting him to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” as the Constitution requires.

Yet on the General Assembly resolution, I would defend an abstention, even though I strongly oppose Obama’s Cuba policy. Indeed, I would go further. Were it my call, the US ambassador to the United Nations would never cast a vote in the General Assembly.

The suggestion isn’t original. It was proposed in the 1960s by the political theorist James Burnham, who died in 1987. To vote on General Assembly resolutions, he argued, is to lend them an authority to which serious countries like the United States know they aren’t entitled. If that was true in Burnham’s day, it is even truer now, when the General Assembly is dominated by corrupt, authoritarian, or tyrannical governments that are hostile to democratic liberties and contemptuous of human dignity. We should not indulge the pretense that there is moral significance to any proposition merely because a majority of the UN’s membership endorses it.

The United Nations was born 70 years ago this October with the ratification of a charter committing member-states to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” and “reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights.” To be sure, those ideals were always aspirational. But what remains of them? Look at the UN today and what do you see? The world’s cruelest dictatorships seated on the Human Rights Council. A monomaniacal hostility toward Israel. Global financial and sexual scandals. Thundering applause for speeches by tyrants and terrorists. The General Assembly has become a moral wasteland and a monument to hypocrisy.

We cannot simply walk away from the UN. But we can at least decline to solemnize the farce by voting on General Assembly resolutions. The Security Council is different: Its resolutions can have legal force and we have veto power. But in the General Assembly, where cynicism reigns, we gain nothing by voting. Certainly America’s views should be explained and defended. But when the question is called, the United States should abstain. On every issue, every time.

Australia: Is Clueless Clemmie emulating that vicious British barrister feminist?

I want to say something about Clementine Ford's latest emission just to provide the balance that her Fascist thinking lacks but I am initially a little struck by her new photo. See above.

Her old photo with its furiously red lipstick still accompanies her actual column but on the main page of the SMH there is now a much softer picture of her. Is she hoping to trap rebarbative old reactionaries like me into praising her looks? After the Charlotte Proudperson episode in Britain she should be so lucky! NEVER praise a feminist's looks! So what is the new image about? Does she want a Lesbian bit on the side? I guess that's it. Lesbian couples I have known did have one attractive female.

But on to the important stuff: In a typical Fascist way, she wants the government to solve our problems -- in this case the problem of violence against women. But how CAN a government do that? Turnbull has announced that he will spend a lot of money on it but that is just window-dressing. Is he going to put a policeman in every home? Of course not. Governments may be able to scratch at the margins of the problem but large and inherited male/female differences will always be there and will in extreme and rare cases result in frustrations great enough to evoke violence.

All that the polity can reasonably do is provide refuges for threatened women and severe punishment for those men who do physically attack women. But as far as I can tell, that is already pretty much in place. Some problems will never be completely solved and a mature person learns to know when an asymptote (limit) has been approached.

Just some excerpts from Clemmie below -- JR

Over the two, long years that Tony Abbott was Prime Minister, very little was done to address the scourge of men's violence against women. This sustained, brutal form of misogyny currently sees around 6 women killed per month while claiming the lives of just under 60 women this year*. Despite the arrogant appointment of himself to the office of Prime Minister for Women, Abbott's interest in issues affecting women's lives remained rooted in the retro ideology that assumes our greatest challenges lie in feeding our families and keeping our energy bills down.

Indeed, rather than direct even a skerrick of the attention given to combating fictional terror threats and desperate refugees fleeing war-torn countries, the Abbott government actually withdrew funding from organisations offering vital services to the victims of family violence. During the exit speech supposedly listing all of the successes of his government, Abbott reemphasised his disinterest in the impact of family violence when he said, "Then there's the challenge of ice and domestic violence, yet to be addressed."

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

The forgotten First Amendment freedom

Freedom of the press is out of fashion across the Western world. Yet it is as important as free speech to a free society.

In the UK, the first state-backed system of press regulation for more than 300 years is about to begin – via the Royal Charter agreed by all of the political parties in a deal with the tabloid-bashing lobby Hacked Off. A new law will impose potentially punitive costs on publications that refuse to bend the knee and sign up – which so far includes all of the national press.

In the US, the First Amendment to the Constitution still prevents such legal regulation. Yet there, too, an influential lobby is pushing for greater state intervention to tame the press and media – for example, demanding that the Supreme Court afford less protection to ‘lower value’ forms of published speech, or government intervention to enforce a mandatory ‘right to reply’ on the press and even subsidise a more ‘serious’ (that is, sanitised) media.

Meanwhile, the creeping culture of You Can’t Say That seeks to impose more informal restrictions on the freedom of the press on both sides of the Atlantic.

The strange thing is that many of those who show such disdain for press freedom today would identify themselves as liberal supporters of free speech. They try to make a distinction between free speech for individuals (seen as a Good Thing) and freedom of the press (Not Necessarily So).

Those who want to separate free speech from freedom of the press only demonstrate that they don’t really support either. These two liberties are and always have been inseparable. There are good historical reasons why the First Amendment to the US Constitution has, since 1791, coupled them together to be jointly and equally protected from state interference, declaring that ‘Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press’.

From the beginning, the demand for free speech was focused on freedom of the press – which meant the printing press. The modern struggle began in earnest from the seventeenth century in Britain and then America. It was not about an abstract wish for freedom of expression, but a specific demand for an end to state control of the published word.

The precursor to the fight for free speech — the demand for freedom of conscience — was about the liberty of the individual privately to believe what he thought true, not what he was told to believe by the political and religious authorities. The demand for freedom of speech went a step further, seeking the liberty to express those beliefs and opinions in public. And how was such public freedom of expression to be made effective? Primarily through the printing press, which made it possible to popularise ideas on a wide scale for the first time.

That was why the struggle for free speech focused, first in Britain and then in the American colonies, on attempts to end the system of state licensing. These laws gave the Crown control over everything that was printed, and could send those convicted of publishing unlicensed ‘seditious libels’ that criticised the government to jail or the gallows.

In the first wave of the free-speech wars in England, those demanding freedom of the press were religious heretics who wanted first a Bible printed in English rather than Latin, and then the liberty to express their Puritan and non-conformist creed. Their clash with the censorious power of central authority soon melded into a rising political clamour for freedom of the press. As the English Civil War broke out between the king and parliament in the 1640s, the demand for freedom of the press was at the forefront of the movement for political and social change, led by the ‘revolt of the pamphleteers’. John Lilburne of the radical Levellers demanded of parliament ‘that you will open the press, whereby all treacherous and tyrannical designs may be the easier discovered, and so prevented’.

Crown licensing of the press formally ended in 1695. Yet in the late eighteenth century, English radicals such as John Wilkes were still fighting for the freedom to publish what they saw fit, criticise the king’s government and report the proceedings of parliament without the threat of being sent to the Tower. The ‘liberty of the press’, declared the front page of Wilkes’ notorious newspaper, was ‘the birthright of every Briton’.

That belief in the freedom of the press as the lifeblood of a free society spread to America. The revolutionary demand for independence from Britain took hold thanks in no small part to the radical publications that Americans had fought for the freedom to print. Looking back on these momentous events, the second US president, John Adams, reflected that the war for independence that began in 1775 was not the real revolution. That, said Adams, had been the revolution in the hearts and minds of the people, the spark for which had been pamphlets and newspapers ‘by which the public opinion had been enlightened and informed’. Freedom of the press had proved the catalyst for the creation of a free nation. Little wonder that it was to be embedded in the US Constitution by the First Amendment.

Yet today, freedom of the press is often looked down upon in high-minded liberal circles, as if it were some sort of corporate trick that only serves the interests of the major media organisations. As the British comedian turned Hollywood actor and Hacked Off frontman Steve Coogan put it, ‘Press freedom is a lie, peddled by proprietors and editors who only care about profit!’. The former funnyman was not joking. If only those heroes of history who had fought and suffered for press freedom could have had access to the wisdom of Coogan/Alan Partridge, they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble. Who would want to be locked up or hanged, drawn and quartered for the sake of ‘a lie’?

The power that a few large entities can exercise over much of the established Anglo-American media is a longstanding problem, which is likely to remain until we all become billionaires or the billionaires all become socialists. It will not be improved by encouraging the state to encroach further upon the freedom of the press and the media. Indeed, it is an argument for demanding that the media be made more open and free, not less.

Freedom of speech and of the press are not only inseparable. They are also indivisible liberties, that we defend for all or none at all. You cannot start tampering with it for one group – even if the group is press barons or PR executives – and expect it to remain intact for everybody else. Once the bulwark has been breached and the cultural support for the principle of freedom is compromised, everything is called into question. And once freedom of speech and of the press is openly called into question it ceases to be a universal right and becomes a privilege to be cherry-picked.

This is not a zero-sum game, where you somehow have to decrease the rights of others in order to increase your own. Freedom of expression is not a negotiable commodity that can somehow be ‘redistributed’ away from the rich and powerful towards the rest. To infringe on the right to free speech of others can only risk undermining your own capacity to exercise it. Those who fought for freedom of the speech and of the press through history demanded the extension of those rights to the lowest and ‘the meanest’ in society, not their removal from others.

For all of its anti-elitist posturing, the current to curb press freedom is at root often a coded attack on the masses who are supposedly ‘brainwashed’ by the mass media. We are far better off defending and extending press freedom, using the new opportunities provided by web publishing, to win a bigger audience for an alternative media.

No doubt there are many imperfections with the press and the wider media today. But history suggests there is always one thing worse than a free press, and that is its opposite. It is worth remembering that nowhere in the world is the problem that the media is somehow ‘too free’. It is high time that the forgotten First Amendment freedom came back into fashion.

The Marine Corps' unique position among the armed services gives it a strong argument in favor of a waiver to Secretary of Defense Ash Carter’s plan to remove restrictions “excluding women from assignment to units and positions whose primary mission is to engage in direct combat on the ground.” When the policy to include women in combat roles was first announced in 2013, the services were given a deadline of Oct. 1, 2015, to implement “gender-neutral” occupational standards and conduct studies related to the change. Any service that believed assignment of women to a particular position or specialty was detrimental could request an exemption to the policy and maintain its restriction.

The Marines plan to request a waiver based on their findings from a nine-month evaluation of the effectiveness of mixed-gender infantry units. Women were injured more frequently, were not as accurate marksmen as men, had trouble with combat duties such as removing the wounded from the battlefield and had a detrimental effect on unit cohesion. (We wouldn’t put a woman in a boxing ring with a man, so why would we throw them into combat?)

That didn’t stop Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus from opposing the waiver. He framed his opposition with the rebuttal that “the SEALs aren’t asking for one.” Given the general public’s perception of SEALs as the pinnacle of all things manly and military, this would seem to be a convincing argument. But lest anyone discount the opposition to Mabus as the work of sexist males who aren’t up with the times, a female Marine who participated in the study added that Mabus “completely rolled the Marine Corps and the entire staff that was involved in putting this [experiment] in place under the bus.”

And, in fact, Mabus' statement is the equivalent of showing us an apple to persuade us that we should like oranges.

In the unlikely event that any females survive (none has even been granted an opportunity to start at this point) the SEALs grueling rite of passage — the Basic Underwater Demolition Course or “BUDS” — the number will be so small that it will have minimal impact on the community. Not requesting a waiver is a win-win and makes sense for the SEALs. They’re seen as relatively open-minded and therefore score political points, and they incur very little risk that a significant number of females will join the teams and jeopardize readiness.

Given two female officers' successful completion of what’s viewed as the Army’s most physically demanding course — Ranger School — the Army would’ve had a difficult time persuading its civilian leadership that a waiver was warranted in its case.

This course-based approach to answering the question highlights a subtle but important distinction between the Army and Marine Corps. While the Marine Corps believes the small unit is the essential element on the battlefield and orients its training toward building esprit and cohesion within the unit, the Army’s philosophy is that unit performance will be maximized by filling it with individuals who have completed schools and earned certain qualifications — Ranger, Airborne, Sapper, etc. This is reflected in their respective uniforms: Marines — defined by their Eagle, Globe and Anchor — favor anonymity (not even requiring names to be displayed on uniforms until the 1990s) and interchangeability, while a soldier wears his credibility on his chest and sleeve. One approach is not necessarily superior to the other, and the differences make sense given the services' size and roles, but they are significant enough variables that they should be factored into the discussion.

In light of the distinctions, it’s easier to understand why the Army and Marines respectively sought to answer different questions in response to the policy. Whether other organizations are requesting an exception may be interesting, but it’s also irrelevant. Mabus' comments highlight his fundamental lack of understanding of one of the services he’s supposedly leading and should disqualify him from playing a decisive role in the exemption request process.

Then again, Mabus is merely a product of Barack Obama’s influence on the military. From rules of engagement to budget cutbacks to naming a homosexual Army secretary, Obama has had a devastating effect on military morale. And we can expect the beatings to continue until morale improves.

The battle over Bendigo’s $3 million mosque took another menacing turn yesterday when a pro-mosque councillor found a threatening leaflet from right-wing extremist group United ­Patriots Front in his letterbox.

The bright red leaflet, with a picture purporting to be a Muslim holding a gun and with a big red cross through it, accuses Mayor Peter Cox and head of a not-for-profit, non-government emergency housing group Ken Marchingo of “corruption”.

Pictures of Mr Cox and Mr Marchingo are at the top of the leaflet with the words “What does corruption look like?” followed by a picture of a mosque with a large red cross through it.

The leaflet also announces the details of another anti-mosque rally and a map highlighting where protesters should meet.

Pro-mosque councillor Mark Weragoda discovered the leaflet as he was mowing lawns at his home yesterday and said he took it as a “personal threat”.

“It wasn’t there on Saturday evening, so it must have been put in my letterbox overnight or early in the evening,” he said.

Mr Weragoda said none of his neighbours received the leaflet and he was concerned for the welfare of his wife and daughter, who were recently threatened during an anti-mosque protest at a heated council meeting at Bendigo Town Hall.

The meeting was abruptly adjourned and councillors were escorted out by police after protesters, most from outside Bendigo, swamped the council chambers.

The United Patriot Front is a breakaway group of extremists and a new anti-Islamic Australian group that has expressed political solidarity with far-right and neo-Nazi groups in Europe.

Bendigo residents and pro-mosque locals are outraged that members of extremist far-right groups, such as UPF, the Q society, which claims to be “Australia’s leading Islamic-critical movement”, and Reclaim Australia, have hijacked the local debate and used it to send anti-Muslim messages.

More than 400 anti-Islamic extremists were bussed into Bendigo from Sydney and Melbourne to an anti-mosque rally last month that saw violent scuffles between the anti-mosque group and an anti-racism group.

More than 300 police were sent to Bendigo for the rally in what one commander described as the biggest police operation he had seen outside of Melbourne.

Mr Weragoda believed the threatening leaflet was in response to an article in which he was named as pro-mosque published in the Weekend Magazine on Saturday that detailed the issues around the mosque debate and the involvement of right-wing extremist groups from outside town.

He said anti-mosque groups were active in trying to shut down any media seen as favourable to a mosque.

Australia’s greatest comedic export, Barry Humphries, says the ABC has become an extreme left-wing broadcaster and the former prime minister Tony Abbott was correct to criticise it.

“The ABC has become increasingly left wing. Blatantly so. Indeed so has another notable Australian newspaper,” Humphries said in an interview with The Australian. “And I was surprised that they (the ABC) can be so openly of the extreme left.”

During his visits to Australia, about four times a year, his esteem for the public broadcaster has diminished, although he thoroughly enjoyed Sarah Ferguson’s The Killing Season — while ­suspecting the ABC produced it to ingratiate itself with the government during a difficult time in their relationship.

Humphries said the criticisms of the ABC by the former prime minister were justified.

“They were getting very worried about their relationship with the prime minister so they made this program with Rudd and ­Gillard to ingratiate themselves, The Killing Season, one of the best things the ABC has done,” he said.

When Humphries reads the newspapers each day, he said he becomes “steamed up” and often finds himself angrily writing a ­letter to the editor. But he rarely sends them in.

“Every day when I read the paper something occurs when I get steamed up or fired up, steamed up, whatever, irate and I write a letter and never send it,” he said. “I have a pile. I should publish the letters. There’ve been a few good letters of mine.”

Bureaucratic folly, stupidity in high places and sexual hypocrisy are among the things that ignite Humphries’ ire.

Reflecting on how the format of news has changed over the years, he said so had Australia’s values, and he deeply regrets the way society has become, in his view, too politically correct.

“We think we live in a liberated age but we don’t really. I mean it’s just the way these things are ­expressed publicly and how we wag our fingers at people, how we disapprove of them and how we’re living in an age of new puritanism,” he said.

“Things were much more ­liberal 20 years ago than they are today. I’m really the sworn enemy of all forms of political correctness. You can’t call something what it really is.”

Humphries was so “steamed-up” over the website New ­Matilda’s publication of the University of Sydney professor Barry Spurr’s racist emails that he did send that particular letter in.

In the letters to the editor page of The Australian, Humphries defended Professor Spurr, lamenting the fact Australia had lost its sense of humour.

“I did feel that this man who was engaging in rather elaborate and perhaps rather tasteless joke privately was hacked into and then excoriated,” Humphries said.

“I thought we do persecute people pretty ruthlessly in Australia. And particularly in the ­academic world; it’s a jungle, it’s cut throat.”

While Professor Spurr was slammed for being racist, Humphries’ view is that one should “call a spade a spade” when discussing race. Speaking of Australian teachers who instil political correctness in students, Humphries described them as: “These sort of bullies who forbid them to call a spade a spade.”

“If you look at any school magazine today, very often they are Chinese or they come from families outside Australia,” he said, while agreeing it was “wonderful” to have a multicultural society.

Humphries’ relationship with The Australian began 51 years ago, soon after the newspaper was launched and Humphries wrote a regular column in it. “My column was really about whatever happened to me during that week. Sometimes it was funny and sometimes it was terrible. I look back on it now not really with vacuous self-satisfaction but really with a kind of nostalgia for the 1960s, which is when it all happened,” he said.

“I’ve always liked the paper, our first national paper after all, and it’s still going strong. I still read it. I get it online.”

Humphries knew The Australian’s founding editor, the late Max Newton, very well. “He was rather cynical, he was an old-fashioned, hard-drinking journalist,” he said.

“Of course now they don’t smoke or drink. Max used to say all you need to be a good journalist is a Samsonite briefcase, a bottle of scotch and a gold Amex and a spare pair of underpants.”

After a long history with News Corp, Humphries agreed to be part of News Corp’s advertising campaign to promote the tablet and mobile editions of the metropolitan newspapers, The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun, TheCourier-Mail and The Advertiser.

His characters, Dame Eda Everage and Sir Les Patterson are prominent in the ad, created by firm Archibald Williams, and there is a cameo by model Jennifer Hawkins. It launched yesterday and will run for eight weeks on social, digital, television and print.

News Corp managing director metro and regional publishing Damian Eales said the team chose Humphries because he is a comedic icon and Dame Eda and Sir Les were national living treasures.

“They appeal to the spectrum of our readers and we were delighted they were both on hand to lend their irrepressible humour to our campaign,” he said.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

Monday, September 28, 2015

Hospital told Royal Airforce sergeant to leave waiting room in case his uniform upset other patients

An RAF sergeant who has served in Iraq and Afghanistan was moved out of a hospital waiting room because staff feared his uniform would upset people from different cultures, it was reported.

Aircraft engineer Mark Prendeville’s treatment was condemned as ‘horrifying’ by military figures and Air Force veterans – but follows a string of incidents in recent years where service personnel were snubbed because of their uniform.

Sergeant Prendeville, 38, was taken to the A&E department at Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Hospital in Margate, Kent, after chemicals from a fire extinguisher got in to his eyes during a training exercise.

He was then taken to an empty corner of the waiting room before being moved behind a corner by hospital staff, The Sun reported.

In an explanation to his family, hospital workers were said to have claimed ‘they didn’t want to upset people’ because they ‘have lots of different cultures coming in’.

Sergeant Prendeville’s father, Jim, said: ‘Mark was moved because of his uniform – he was told that twice. The words they used were: “We’ve lots of cultures coming in”. ‘Mark was quite annoyed, but he’s a quiet lad and didn’t want to cause a fuss.’

Mr Prendeville added: ‘He didn’t care about the burns, he felt worse about how he was treated. I was absolutely disgusted when I heard. I don’t know what is so offensive about a uniform.’

Veterans and military figures condemned Sergeant Prendeville’s treatment. Former Chief of the Air Staff Sir Michael Graydon described the incident as ‘disappointing’.

He said: ‘I would have thought, regardless of whether he had his uniform on or not, it was more important to deal with the situation, which was the chap had something very unpleasant happen to him, and he should be dealt with immediately. Moving him to other rooms in the danger of offending people strikes me of getting the priorities absolutely wrong.’

Former RAF navigator Flight Lieutenant John Nichol said he was appalled. ‘This is horrifying,’ he said. ‘You should not be treated differently for wearing a uniform – you should be lauded because you’re wearing uniform.’

A spokesman for East Kent University Hospitals NHS Trust apologised to Sergeant Prendeville for ‘any embarrassment’.

Hundreds of animal rights activists covered themselves in fake blood and sprawled across a public square in Paris to protest against 'animal suffering and meat consumption' today.

The demonstration was organised by the 269 Life campaign group as part of the World Day for the Abolition of Meat, which has taken place every year since 2009.

It staged an 'open-air slaughterhouse' at the Place du Palais Royal.

Disturbing images showed one participant - covered in red paint - suspended from his legs as two pretend-butchers stand next to him.

The 269 Life group who staged the demonstration refer to the slaughter of animals as a 'holocaust' and claim 'veganism is is an essential step that any responsible and sensible person must take'.

A statement on their website reads: 'We aim to bring the pain and horror other animals face each and every day out of the suppressed darkness and into the realm of everyday life.

'Most people are well aware of what is being done to other animals, and yet remain apathetic in the face of the atrocities committed in their name, even after witnessing the utmost graphic evidence.'

In Britain, the Labour party's new shadow environment secretary Kerry McCarthy has said meat eaters should be stigmatised in the same way as smokers.

Ms McCarthy, who has admitted she is a 'militant' vegan, has worried countryside campaigners who warned that her veganism and strong opposition to hunting and the badger cull would harm Britain's farming industry.

The World Weeks for the Abolition of Meat (WWAMs) -held every year at the end of the months of January, May and September - are used to promote the idea of 'abolishing the production and consumption of the flesh of sentient beings'.The group's website wants the production and consumption of 'animal flesh' to be made illegal on 'ethical grounds'.

It emerged this week that Facebook reached an out-of-court settlement with a father from Northern Ireland after he sued it for failing to enforce its age-restriction policy. Apparently his daughter, aged 11 at the time the events took place, was exposed to messages and posts from men of an ‘entirely inappropriate sexual nature’. Facebook requires users to be over 13 years old to sign up for an account, but it has no way of confirming ages aside from the dates of birth users input themselves.

The girl had set up several accounts on which she posted suggestive photos of herself, and each time Facebook became aware that she was under 13 the accounts were closed down. But her father’s lawyers argued that Facebook should have done more to prevent her setting up new accounts after previous ones were deleted. The solicitor was quoted in the Daily Mail saying, ‘My own personal view is that Facebook isn’t suitable for under-18s, but the company isn’t even able to uphold its own policy of keeping under-13s out. An age check, like asking for a passport number, would be a simple measure for Facebook to implement.’

Could I propose a radical alternative? Why don’t parents actually go to the trouble of looking after their kids properly? The girl in question was only 11 years old. Never mind unsupervised internet access, when I was 11 I was barely allowed a say in what haircut I had. Admittedly, Facebook wasn’t around when I was a kid, but had it existed the onus would have been on my parents, not Facebook, to stop me using it.

If parents left a pack of fags and a lighter lying around the house where their 11-year-old child could reach them, and they then found their little bundle of joy merrily puffing away, no one would think that Marlboro should be held responsible. The case of an 11-year-old using Facebook is no different, and yet Facebook is being held responsible for a parental mistake.

The internet has done wonders for society, but it has also created new problems for us all, especially children. But these are problems that parents themselves have to take responsibility for tackling. In this case, the family even tried to sue the Department of Culture, Media and Sport on the grounds that it should have brought in legislation to enforce age limits. That really is a staggering abdication of parental responsibility.

Lawyers argued that Facebook had a duty of care to the girl but was ‘negligent in that it failed to have a proper system in place for registration of a Facebook account so that it was impossible, or at the very least difficult, for a child to register by misrepresenting her age’. In my view, Facebook fulfilled its duty of care when it deactivated the accounts after realising she was underage. The only people who failed in their duty of care were her parents. Corporations and governments do not and should not raise our children. Rather than trying to ramp up Facebook’s vetting procedures, parents should start taking responsibility for their kids.

The hordes of migrants overrunning European borders have reached epic, almost biblical proportions and show no sign of stopping. It is as if one continent is being decanted into another; a Third World poured into the First World.

Ironically most of these migrants have made their first landfall on the islands of Greece which so recently caused Europe’s greatest financial crisis and whose bailout has turned the Euro into confetti money.

I am thinking: why this and why now?

As a religious person I see divine intervention in all things and have learned that the G-d of Israel seeks His vengeance Middah K’Neged Middah. This principle was used to drown Pharaoh Ramses and his charioteers as the lex talionis for ordering the drowning of every newborn Jewish boy. There are many other examples throughout sc‎ripture and our very laws are built on proportional punishment, right down to the eye-for-an-eye.

Another divine principle is ואברכה מברכיך ומקללך אאר – that G-d will bless those who bless our people and will curse those who curse us.

The EU has been at the forefront of anti-Israel activism, supporting declarations of unilateral Palestinian statehood on sovereign Jewish land. Europe’s academia and trades unions are unashamed patrons of the world BDS movement. Their aims are twofold. To delegitimize Israel as a sovereign Jewish state and to destroy her economy with sanctions and discriminatory labelling of her exports.

How does the God of the Exodus judge a nation that denies the legitimacy of His people’s borders? Answer: He makes a mockery of their own borders.

How does the God of the Exodus judge a nation that seeks to destroy the economy of His people’s state? Answer: He makes a mockery of their own money.

That’s my answer to “why this and why now?” Middah K’Neged Middah.

Last year, at the height of his polling lead to win the UK general election, Jewish oppo‎sition leader Ed Milliband demanded that his Labour Party MPs must support a parliamentary vote to recognize 'Palestine' as an independent state. Against all predictions he lost the subsequent general election in a major upset. If that wasn’t enough, he has now been replaced by a Marxist oddball who is tipped to keep Labour out of power for a generation.

Is it a coincidence that the Labour party which was so anxious to recognise the PLO as a state now has a leader who doesn't accept the legitimacy of the English queen?

If, on the eve of that Palestine debate with Milliband on sure course to win the election, you would have presented this scenario as a crystal ball to Labour Party members they’d have laughed at you.

But He who laughs last is usually looking after the Jewish people.

As I write these lines, EU states are scrambling all over themselves for the most sought-after commodity ... razor wire fencing. How rich that these are the same people who excoriated the Jews for building a security fence which stopped 95 percent of terror attacks on our people.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Another multicultural sex offender in Britain

A convicted sex offender cruises the streets in his car looking for his next victim - and locates a six-year-old girl riding her bicycle.

Imran Khan, 34, from Accrington, already had a conviction for a sexual offence involving a 12-year-old girl in 2008 and was on the sex offenders' register. He was jailed for nine years, but was released in 2013.

But despite being under supervision, the paedophile was able to re-offend in this sickening incident.

At around 4pm on March 26 this year, the little girl was playing on Nairne Street in Burnley when she was snatched by Khan and bundled into the boot of his black Vauxhall Astra car.

She was driven four miles to Scarth Lane, Hapton where Khan exposed himself and tried to force her to commit a sexual act.

He then dumped the girl in a wheelie bin and she was found in a traumatised state by some children playing nearby.

Khan now faces another lengthy prison sentence after he pleaded guilty at Preston crown court to charges of kidnap, kidnap with intent to commit a sexual offence and breach of a sexual offences prevention order. He was remanded in custody to be sentenced on October 23.

Detective Inspector Jim Elston said: 'This was a horrendous offence which would have been terrifying for any adult, let alone a young child.

'Imran Khan was a registered sex offender living in the community after he was convicted in 2008 of a sexual offence involving a 12-year-old girl.

'While we have rigorous systems in place to manage sex offenders who have served a sentence and been released into the community, this cannot happen 24 hours a day and unfortunately on occasion an offender may go on to commit a further offence as happened in this case. 'Thankfully that is relatively rare.'

He added: 'There is currently a review on going into this particular case and we will clearly look carefully at the results of that to see if there are any lessons we can learn.'

“WE’RE not racist, we’re just a bunch of a**holes.” That’s the takeaway quote from the lawyer for a Houston nightclub accused of racism after turning black patrons away at the door.

In a particularly frank video posted to YouTube, Gaslamp nightclub lawyer Tim Sutherland said the venue does not discriminate based on skin colour, but does discriminate based on class, gender and whether or not a customer is “a smoking hot babe”.

“We are not willing to be a business that is too timid to speak, that’s too eager to accommodate for fear of offending someone and too willing to throw out our private property rights and our freedom of association so that everyone has it their way,” Sutherland said.

“We are willing to hurt your feelings by telling you that you don’t fit the dress code. We will tell you that you need some girls and that this isn’t ‘bro’s night out’ because we don’t want you creeping out the girls that we already have inside.The Houston nightclub making news around the world.

The Houston nightclub making news around the world.Source:Facebook

“We will tell you that you’re too cheap for our nightclub if you don’t want to pay a cover, because we know that if you won’t pay a cover, you’re probably not going to buy any drinks. This isn’t market square free bingo night, we’ve gotta make a profit.”

Gaslamp was accused of discriminating against Brandon Ball, a 32-year-old black man who tried to get in to the club on September 11.

On Facebook, Ball wrote he and two other African American friends were told to pay a cover charge when “white folks” were let in for free.

“When we walked up the guy at the door told us $20 each. We didn’t want to pay that amount so we decided to go to the next bar down, The Dogwood, which was free,” Ball wrote. “After about 30 minutes we left The Dogwood and were walking back. As we passed the Gaslamp we noticed folks walking in without having to pay. Those folks who didn’t have to pay were white.”

Ball’s post was shared more than 11,000 times and local newspapers including the Houston Chronicle picked up the story.

As a response, Gaslamp employed a new policy. Management decided to post the dress code outside the front door so there was no confusion about why people were being refused entry.

A dress code that patrons can’t see, Sutherland said, “can blur the lines between whether someone is being mistreated because of their race or just because we’re a bunch of a**holes. We prefer it to be the latter.”

Sutherland says there’s a difference between being morally questionable and acting illegally.

“For those of you that are outraged, I say there is something you can do, because it’s not illegal until you, the voter, make it illegal. Do your job, get educated and make it so there’s common ground between your beliefs and the world you live in.”

He said Ball was asked to pay a cover because he was in a group of guys with no girls and he wanted to go to the rooftop terrace “where we charge everyone a cover”.

He admitted there was a problem with discrimination against black people generally that Gaslamp would do its best to address.

“If the Gaslamp has made any mistakes it’s a failure to take the time to consider what the customer is coming to the door with. Some customers may bring with them a lifetime of race based issues they’ve experienced and we certainly understand if somebody receives poor treatment it can be perceived at its worst as racism.”

The video may have missed the mark. Of those who had responded on Thursday, 978 gave it a thumbs down and only 139 gave it a thumbs up.

Five appeals court judges have joined in a dissenting opinion stating that the type of argument being used to justify the government's efforts to force the Little Sisters of the Poor to comply with an Obamacare regulation that requires their health-care plan to cover sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs could also be used to force a Christian to work on Dec. 25 because the court had determined that “sources show that Jesus was actually born in March.”

Or, the judges said, the same type of reasoning could be used to justify providing a Jewish prisoner with “only non-Kosher food.”

The judges were objecting to a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, on which they sit, which ruled that the Obama administration can force the nuns to comply with the regulation even though doing so compels the sisters to act against their Catholic faith.

The Little Sisters have asked the Supreme Court to take up their case, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued an amicus brief supporting the Little Sisters. So, too, has a group of Orthodox Jewish Rabbis.

The mission of the Little Sisters is to maintain homes for the elderly poor, one of which--the Jeanne Jugan Residence--is located a few blocks from the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.

In the petition they filed asking the Supreme Court to take up the case, the lawyers for the Little Sisters summarized their argument in defense of the sisters' religious liberty.

“The Little Sisters of the Poor are Catholic nuns who devote their lives to caring for the elderly poor,” said their petition. “The government has put them to the impossible choice of either violating the law or violating the faith upon which their lives and ministry are based.

“HHS insists that the Little Sisters must comply with a mandate that their employee healthcare plans ‘provide coverage’ for free contraceptives,” says their petition. “Although there is no dispute that the Little Sisters sincerely believe that all the available compliance methods would make them morally complicit in grave sin, HHS refuses to give them the exemption it has given other religious employers, and instead requires them to comply, either directly or by executing documents that authorize and obligate others to use the Little Sisters’ healthcare plans to accomplish the ‘seamless’ provision of contraceptive coverage.

“HHS does not dispute that the Little Sisters sincerely believe that their religion no more allows them to comply with the mandate via this regulatory mechanism than to do so directly,” says the petition. “But HHS disagrees with the Little Sisters’ moral analysis. In its view, the Little Sisters are ‘fighting an invisible dragon’ that can be vanquished with the ‘stroke of their own pen.’

If the Little Sisters follow their own moral compass instead of HHS’s, they face millions of dollars in penalties.”

In July, a three-judge panel of appeals judges ruled two-to-one against the sisters. Rather than ask the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit to review the case, the sisters appealed directly to the Supreme Court. Nonetheless, the full appeals court held a vote on whether to take up the case, and a majority of the twelve active judges on the court voted no.

Judge Harris Hartz wrote an opinion dissenting from this decision, and he was joined by four other judges on the court. “The opinion of the panel majority is clearly and gravely wrong,” said the dissenting judges.

“When a law demands that a person do something the person considers sinful and the penalty for refusal is a large financial penalty, then the law imposes a substantial burden on that person’s free exercise of religion,” said the judges.

“All the plaintiffs in this case sincerely believe they will be violating God’s law if they execute the documents required by the government,” said the judges. “And the penalty for refusal to execute the documents may be in the millions of dollars. How can it be any clearer that the law substantially burdens the plaintiffs’ free exercise of religion?”

The five judges argue that the court’s majority seems to have second-guessed the Little Sisters’ interpretation of Catholic moral teaching and what it requires of them.

“This is a dangerous approach to religious liberty,” the judges said.

“Could we really tolerate letting courts examine the reasoning behind a religious practice or belief and decide what is core and what is derivative,” the judges said. “A Christian could be required to work on December 25 because, according to a court, his core belief is that he should not work on the anniversary of the birth of Jesus but a history of the calendar and other sources show that Jesus was actually born in March; a December 25 work requirement therefore does not substantially burden his core belief.

“Or a Jewish prisoner,” they said, “could be provided only non-kosher food because the real purpose of biblical dietary laws is health, so as long as the pork is well-cooked, etc., the prisoner’s religious beliefs are not substantially burdened.”

Well-done! Keeping creepy Crepeau out is a big win, judging by his absurd condemnations of the UK. There is no doubt about what his judgment of Australia would be. He compared Britain to Nazi Germany -- JR

The United Nations has postponed a planned visit to Australia because the federal government cannot guarantee legal immunity to detention centre workers who discuss asylum seekers and migrants.

The United Nations' Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Canada's Francois Crepeau, was due to visit Australia on Sunday for about two weeks to investigate the plight of migrants and asylum seekers in offshore detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island, following an invitation from the federal government.

But Mr Crepeau said in a statement that the Border Force Act, which makes it a crime for immigration and border protection workers to disclose information about offshore detention centres, "serves to discourage people from fully disclosing information relevant to my mandate".

Under the law, such people face up to two years in prison for recording or disclosing information they obtain from their work.

"This threat of reprisals with persons who would want to cooperate with me on the occasion of this official visit is unacceptable," he said. "The Act prevents me from fully and freely carrying out my duties during the visit, as required by the UN guidelines for independent experts carrying out their country visits."

It was impossible for Mr Crepeau to carry out his visit as an independent expert for the UN because the Australian government "was not prepared" to meet his request for a written guarantee that anyone he met during his visit would not risk being intimidated or face imprisonment under the law.

A spokesman for Immigration Minister Peter Dutton described the postponement as "disappointing and unfortunate".

"The government accommodated to the fullest extent possible the requests of the office of the Special Rapporteur as it has with past visits."

The spokesman declined to say whether the government would consider offering exemptions to the secrecy provisions of the Australian Border Force Act, saying: "The Special Rapporteur was briefed on the responsibilities and obligations of personnel under relevant Australian law.

"Australia remains ready to arrange a future visit by the Special Rapporteur."

Mr Crepeau said Australia had also denied his repeated requests for full access to offshore detention centres since March. "I was also extremely disappointed that I was unable to secure the cooperation needed to visit any offshore centre, given the international human rights and humanitarian law concerns regarding them, plus the Australian Senate Inquiries on the offshore detention centres in Nauru and Papua New Guinea, which raised concerns and recommendations concerning these centres," he said.

The Special Rapporteur said he had been planning the visit with the Australian government since January.

Mr Dutton's spokesman said the Department of Immigration had worked closely with Mr Crepeau's office to organise a programme for his visit, which was to include visits to detention centres, and meetings with key government officials and service providers.

But he said the government had no role in organising access to offshore detention centres: "Access to Regional Processing Centres in Papua New Guinea and Nauru is the responsibility of these sovereign nations and needs to be addressed with their governments."

Organisations including the Australian Human Rights Commission, UNHCR and Commonwealth Ombudsman, had visited both on and offshore detention centres "without the need to respond in this way," he said.

The Human Rights Law Centre's executive director, Hugh de Kretser, said the cancelled visit was "unprecedented for a western liberal democracy".

"This is extremely damaging for Australia's reputation – particularly when our human rights record will be reviewed at the UN in November and we're seeking election to the UN Human Rights Council in 2018. It's extremely damaging to our ability to advance our national interest on the world stage," said Mr de Kretser.

It was also a "huge missed opportunity" for newly-appointed Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to pursue a "more constructive relationship with the UN".

"We urge the Australian Government to urgently provide the necessary assurances to the Special Rapporteur to enable the official visit to take place at a future date."

Doctors, and humanitarian workers have previously criticised the Border Force Act which was passed earlier this year with the support of Labor, saying it prevents proper public scrutiny of detention centres in line with their duty of care to asylum seekers.

The government has dismissed such claims, saying a separate federal law ensured officials were protected in making "public interest disclosures". But it is unclear which health or medical professionals would be required to comply with the new secrecy provisions.

Under the law, workers can only release such information legally if they have permission from the secretary of the department, if they are authorised by law, or if a court or tribunal orders or directs them to do so. The secretary would have to be satisfied that the information would help the person to perform their duties or powers to give them permission to release it.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

Friday, September 25, 2015

Multicultural flasher in London

A SERIAL flasher, who exposes himself to women on trains in England, has been ordered not to travel in shorts or anything that exposes bare skin below the knee.

Mark Thompson, of Wimbledon, in southeast London, was on a train from the town of Epsom, known worldwide for The Derby horse race, that was bound for London Victoria when he exposed himself to four women, the Wimbledon Guardian reported.

The 48-year-old sat across from the women, who noticed that he had a bag on his lap and was wearing shorts exposing himself on Saturday, April 18.

Thompson was identified from CCTV and arrested on July 21.

He was sentenced to four months imprisonment, suspended for 24 months, on Tuesday at City of London Magistrate’s Court, British Transport Police said in a statement.

Thompson was also banned from travelling in shorts or anything that exposes bare skin below the knee, and told he cannot travel on public transport unless using a travel card.

He must also participate in a sex offenders program, be placed on a sexual harm prevention order and register with Wimbledon police station for seven years.

“Thompson made the journey for these women extremely uncomfortable. I am pleased that they reported this incident to us as we take all reports of inappropriate sexual incidents seriously and will investigate them,” said British Transport Police Detective Constable Andrew Parkinson.

“I would like to commend the women in this case for telling us about this incident, and encourage others to follow their example.

“In this case we were able to utilise CCTV to help us find the person responsible.

“The message is clear unwanted sexual behaviour is not acceptable. If you commit an offence, we will do everything in our power to bring you to justice.”

Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s Front National (FN) party, will stand trial over historic comments she made comparing Muslim street prayers to the wartime occupation of France.

Marine Le Pen’s former lawyer and FN party treasurer, Wallerand de Saint Just, has confirmed prosecutors in Lyon will send her to trial on 20 October on charges of inciting racial hatred, reports the Evening Express.

Saint Just framed the issue as a question of freedom of speech, saying: “Political leaders must be able to speak without being afraid of being taken before a judge.”

Le Pen made the comments during her 2010 campaign to take over the FN’s leadership from the party founder, her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. According to France 24, when addressing a rally of supporters in Lyon she said:

“I’m sorry, but for those who really like to talk about World War II, if we’re talking about an occupation, we could talk about the [street prayers], because that is clearly an occupation of territory.

“It is an occupation of sections of the territory, of neighborhoods in which religious law applies – it is an occupation. There are no tanks, there are no soldiers, but it is an occupation nevertheless, and it weighs on people.”

After the initial investigation into Le Pen’s comments was closed in 2011, the case was reopened in 2012 following a legal complaint by a rights group. She was then put under formal investigation in July 2014, after immunity granted her as a member of the European Parliament was removed following a vote requested by French authorities in 2013.

The trial for “inciting discrimination over people’s religious beliefs” has been described as “a scandal” by Le Pen.

She said: “It is a scandal that a political leader can be sued for expressing her beliefs. Those who denounce the illegal behaviour of fundamentalists are more likely to be sued than the fundamentalists who behave illegally.”

Le Pen believes her views are those of the majority and that being stripped of her immunity brings “to the fore the issue of daily violations against secularism in France”.

As Breitbart London previously reported Le Pen has attempted to modernise the anti-EU, anti-mass immigration party her father once led in order to give her the best chance of presidential run in 2017. She wants the party to be defined by its opposition to the EU and a defence of secularism, not her father’s xenophobia and anti-Semitism.

December’s local elections were intended to maintain that direction, adding momentum to her presidential ambitions. Some commentators say the trial, taking place weeks before the local elections, could harm Le Pen’s chances of winning as expected in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region. Others have expressed doubts as to whether the trial is the right move.

“She will no doubt try to turn this to her advantage and make herself out to be the victim of some kind of plot between the mainstream parties, who have had her right to free speech taken away from her,” Jean-Yves Camus told The Local, “if they really wanted to deal with Marine Le Pen it would have been much wiser for the mainstream political parties to just concentrate on themselves and on what they say. For example, the more the centre-right party talks about Islam the more they give legitimacy to the National Front.”

Even as the U.S. military denies reports that American troops were told to ignore Afghan child abusers, an 11-year Green Beret who was ordered discharged after he confronted an alleged rapist was informed Tuesday that the Army has denied his appeal.

Sgt. 1st Class Charles Martland earlier this year was ordered discharged by Nov. 1. He has been fighting to stay in, but in an initial decision, the U.S. Army Human Resources Command told Martland that his appeal “does not meet the criteria” for an appeal.

“Consequently, your request for an appeal and continued service is disapproved,” the office wrote in a memo to Martland.

The memo was shared with FoxNews.com by the office of Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who has advocated for Martland’s case. According to Hunter's office, Martland learned of the decision Tuesday.

The memo, dated Sept. 14, comes as the Defense Department comes under criticism amid reports that U.S. soldiers were instructed to look the other way when Afghan troops and officers were sexually abusing boys.

Gen. John F. Campbell, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said in a statement Tuesday that he is “absolutely confident that no such theater policy has ever existed here, and certainly, no such policy has existed throughout my tenure as commander.”

This week's visit by Pope Francis comes just in time. He is an apostolic missionary courageously reaching out to a once-religious country that now ruthlessly kills its unborn, mercilessly harvesting and selling their body parts. It is somehow fitting that our local witch doctors helpfully enshrine political correctness as a convenient substitute for morality. True Religion is mostly a phrase we use while adorning our butts in ever-widening swatches of denim. Otherwise our most devout beliefs are humanism, self-interest and relative morality. In God We Trust has been replaced by If It Feels Good Do It.

Now maybe you are neither Catholic nor Christian or even skeptical of all organized religions. Even so: Is it reasonable to believe that we can sacrifice as many as 60 million unborn infants since Roe v. Wade without somehow enduring the consequences for their deaths? That grim reality became visible only as the technology of covert video improved, allowing us to witness the real work of Planned Parenthood. And yet the technology of infant-murder-by-medicine has been enshrined since 1973, when the Supreme Court updated the Dred Scott decision for the 21st century.

The Bible calls that sort of thing "the shedding of innocent blood," matter-of-factly promising divine justice to right the scales. Speaking of which: threescore and 10 years ago at Nuremberg we harrumphed to the world that such mass murders were "crimes against humanity." Even the traditional argument, "I was just following orders," was no defense in the face of such evil. Six million died in Nazi death camps, horrific and intolerable, yet only 10 percent of the death toll from our domestic Holocaust. For an unsettling perspective, rent the classic movie "Judgment at Nuremberg" from Netflix. Every argument advanced by the implacable American prosecutors as former Nazis stood before the bar of justice has a deeply chilling effect if you ask the same questions today against the backdrop of sustained American infanticide.

But why am I telling you this when my usual function as a writer is to focus on national security issues? If you think we are somehow immune from divine or temporal retribution, then you probably don't understand the direct challenges to our national survival that are growing exponentially. Today the national security community - other than tenured professors sworn to uphold convenient and untroubled orthodoxy - is divided over the issue of which threat gets here first. Will technological hubris, strategic incompetence or economic collapse be listed as the proximate cause on our national death certificate?

Is it an EMP attack from Iran or North Korea that fries our electronic circuitry and reduces us to a pre-electrical society? (Poetic justice in a way since we did precisely the same thing to Iraq in Desert Storm.) Or possibly our national demise will take place after another cyber attack from China, the long-dreaded Electronic Pearl Harbor now known as "The Assassin's Mace" among Chinese military strategists. Or maybe our hyperinflated national debt ceiling - $18.5 trillion and counting - suddenly implodes, crumbling our national defenses. As a Texas oilman once told my cadets during his guest lecture: "At best, military power is just a violent form of economics."

But why worry about our external defenses when the nation itself is rapidly unraveling? Now living in Texas, I recently witnessed the local malaise now accompanying those ominous macro-portents. Two weeks ago, the Friday night football game celebrated by Texans for generations suddenly became ugly when two players from a San Antonio high school blind-sided a referee. When the YouTube video of that incident quickly went viral, most people down here expected the prompt expulsion of both culprits. In order to reinforce the larger educational point, many San Antonians expected that the school district might even rule that the remainder of the team's season should also be forfeited. After such an incident, how can you stress teamwork and sportsmanship without taking strong practical actions to reinforce those threatened ideals?

Neither of those things happened, of course, since school administrators in Texas are as feckless as their PC colleagues elsewhere. Instead, both students now attend an "alternative high school" while the football season rolls on just as before. They both now claim as well that their gutless attack was justifiable retribution because the referee used "the N-word," an uncorroborated charge but one guaranteed to paralyze neurons, synapses and intestinal fortitude wherever that dread charge is invoked.

But that is the core problem with relative morality: There really are no absolute standards of anything. Even when the videotape provides the most damning evidence of spearing a ref or butchering a fetus, political correctness will always rescue us. Its only core value: Moving those troublesome goalposts whenever needed.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

Thursday, September 24, 2015

A father of two is facing life in prison after stabbing his pregnant wife to death and killing their unborn baby in front of their six-year-old son.

Tariq Khan, 27, stabbed his 24-year-old wife Nadia to death at their home in Bradford, West Yorkshire, just one week after the pair split up.

He pleaded guilty to murdering his wife and destroying the life of their unborn child when he appeared at Bradford Crown Court today.

Speaking after the guilty plea, Mrs Khan's relatives said they were relieved he had admitted the crimes but hoped he would 'rot in hell' and never be freed from prison.

Nazma Khan, Mrs Khan's aunt, said: 'I think he should rot in hell and never be allowed out of jail. 'I'm happy he's pleaded guilty, we knew he did it.'

She said the killer deserved a 'double life' sentence as he had taken away the life of an unborn baby as well as the mother.

'The baby was due around now,' she added. 'That little angel could not be allowed to come into this world because of his father.'

She added that Nadia's two young children, particularly her son, now aged six, had been left traumatised by the loss of their mother.

'He asks me to write a letter to God to say "can you give our mum back". All the other children go to school with their mums and he asks "where's my mum?".

'He cries and doesn't want to go to school and he has nightmares and is awake all night.

'He witnessed the murder. He says he wants to go to sleep where his mum is.'

Mrs Khan said the couple's daughter, who is now four, had also been left confused by her loss.

'She doesn't know what is going on. She does talk about her mum,' she said.

Pakistani-born Khan, who speaks little English, was assisted by an interpreter for today's hearing.

The court was told how Nadia was about six months pregnant when she was found dead at the family home in the Manningham area of Bradford on June 14.

Friends of the couple said the pair had separated a week prior to the killing and described Bradford-born Mrs Khan as intelligent, cheerful, bubbly and happy.

At the time of her death, her sister Anisa, 20, said she was a happy woman who was looking forward to the birth of her baby.

'She was in Mothercare just a few days ago for a Moses basket and baby clothes,' she said. 'She was a really nice person who really loved her children.'

As well as pleading guilty to murdering his wife, Khan also admitted destroying with intent the life of a child capable of being born alive, by a willful act, namely stabbing with a knife, causing the child to die before it had existed independently of its mother.

He also admitted a further charge of assaulting Mrs Khan by beating her on May 16 this year.

Khan, who stood impassively in the dock before the Recorder of Bradford, Judge Roger Thomas QC, was remanded back into custody.

Tall and bearded with cropped hair shaved at the sides and wearing a brown long-sleeved jumper, he was told he will be sentenced on October 16.

His barrister, Ali Bajwa QC, told the court the legal team was not relying on any psychiatric evidence.

Mr Bajwa said there were no mental health issues and conceded Khan would get an automatic sentence of life imprisonment.

It will be up to the judge on the day to rule the minimum term he must serve behind bars before he can even be considered for parole.

Judge Thomas told Khan: 'The sentence that has to be passed in relation to the principal charge is fixed by law.

'That will be a sentence of life imprisonment, but other aspects of the case will have to be considered.'

Walk away, shunt your eyes to the side and pretend you never saw it? Whisper to your friends and neighbors about it in an astonished tone while never doing anything? Or be an antagonist against that evil, shining a light on it, and confronting it without reservation?

What if the evil is cast in a way that many, perhaps even a majority, view it as being politically acceptable or even desirable?

Should one remain silent and quietly work to change the culture that accepts evil through good hearted, private social welfare programs in the hopes that the love offered is enough?

These are the questions facing many Americans as we view an ever encroaching big government take a wrecking ball to what were once assumed freedoms under the false guise of tolerance.

Fundamental concepts like freedom of speech are being attacked by those who see hurts in every word or utterance, and from the role of manufactured victim demand that alternative opinions be censored.

This attack on speech is an obvious step toward tyranny, but other evil is more abstract and less easy to discern.

One example is the government produced expectation that people are owed an income whether they work or not, and that denial of unearned “benefits” is an attack on their fundamental rights. The net effect of this claim against the government is that it effectively puts a demand for payment against those who produce wealth whether as an electrician, retail worker or Fortune 100 CEO making those who work subservient to those who don’t.

The very benefits created to fulfill the expectations of those who choose not to work are used to gain political leverage an ever greater unearned piece of the pie has the perverse effect of making working in entry level jobs a bad economic decision. The very entitlement of those who could but won’t, effectively makes fools out of those who can and do, as the doers are compelled to take care of the dependents further eroding their net earnings.

Another pernicious assault on liberty is the grinding expansion of the regulatory state often at the expense of the poor through higher costs for basic necessities. The EPA power plant regulation stands as a primary, but far from the only, example of this regulatory onslaught. Borne out of a claimed need to address global warming, the EPA rule actually has a negligible impact on the problem it supposedly is designed to address. Instead its impact will be to increase electricity costs by 16 percent over time — a cost that will be disproportionately be borne by those who can least afford it.

Additionally, the higher electricity costs will have another profound impact on lower income wage earners — it will decrease the likelihood that they will find a higher paying job as the U.S. manufacturing sector recedes due to the higher energy costs. The irony is that the American energy boom, absent the Obama regulations, is expected to dramatically increase domestic manufacturing without the need to level wages with the rest of the world. It is the abundance of energy here in America that makes this possible, and if left alone, the lower costs for electricity this abundance produces will likely become a major job creator over the next decade. Yet, Obama’s regulatory assault on inexpensive electricity effectively negates this advantage.

Given the admission by the United Nation’s climate chief, Christiana Figueres that the real goal of the global warming push is not protecting the environment but instead to change the world’s economic structure, saying, “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for the, at least, 150 years, since the industrial revolution.”

Global elitists attempting to change the world’s economic structure away from a system that has produced more shared wealth than any in history under the guise of climate disaster at the expense of America’s poor is exactly the kind of hidden evil that needs exposure. Yet, the cost of standing up against this liberty stealing power grab is ostracism and derision.

Is it worth it?

Is fighting to keep the fundamental principles of self-determination and free enterprise as the cornerstones of our nation’s economic system worth being attacked as an antagonist and naysayer?

The fight for freedom is never easy, and liberty only exists when there are those willing to push back hard against the natural slouch toward accepting government as the keeper of the least of these, rather than taking personal responsibility for that calling.

Freedom of speech only exists when the purveyors of political correctness are rudely cast aside by those willing to mock them and break the cycle of perpetual offense that they wield as a weapon, weathering their ridicule while defeating attempts to incorporate their language cocoon into law.

Economic mobility and freedom only exists when markets are allowed to grow or contract based upon their overall value. When the federal government chooses to increase the cost of basic economic necessities, like burning fuel to generate electricity with a goal of creating scarcity out of abundance, people everywhere suffer.

Some are called to help the poor by providing bread, others to fight for secular solutions where liberty prevails and people are lifted out of poverty through the proven formula of private sector wealth creation. The two work well together, but if either lose the other cannot be sustained, and both are equal callings to confront evil.

Alex Kendrick, the Christian filmmaker whose recent movie “War Room” is a big hit at the box office, recently told a reporter that “the God of Hollywood is political correctness, and they are going to line up with whatever the politically correct view of the day is. For me, I’m lining up my worldview with the word of God. I hope to inspire and draw people to a closer walk with God by my films.”

“War Room,” which tells the story of a marital crisis helped by the power of prayer, was made for $3 million. After capturing the number one spot last week, this past weekend the film was the sixth most popular film in America, with total grosses nearing $50 million.

The writers and directors of “War Room” are Kendrick and his brother Stephen. The two are responsible for several Christian-themed hits, including “Fireproof” and “Courageous.” In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Alex Kendrick talked about the struggles of Christian filmmakers.

Kendrick was asked if he was being persecuted in Hollywood. “Yes,” he replied. “Right now it’s verbal, and it’s happening a lot. If we weren’t heavily criticized, I’d think something is wrong.”

Kendrick was then asked if there were individuals in the movie industry who had expressed a “personal bias against you and Christianity.” Kendrick: “I’d say you already know the answer to that question, but you’re wanting names and I can’t do that. The answer is an emphatic 'yes,' but that’s not a fight I want to pick. There are people who have called us vile names, told us we need to stop making films, and have ugly names for Christians. I’m not going to give you names, I’d rather reach out and minister them."

Kendrick was also asked about Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who was jailed for refusing to issue same sex marriage licenses wither name on them. "From what I understand," he said, "the Constitution in Kentucky that she was hired to support says marriage is between a man and a woman, but it gets really complicated when the Supreme Court votes the other way. Technically, her job is to uphold the Constitution in Kentucky, so it makes things complex. She is paying the price for standing on her faith, and I’d be willing to stand by my faith, as well. If I’m persecuted for being a Christian, I’m willing to accept that."

Charlotte Proudman isn’t the only one trying to tell us what is and isn’t acceptable

It can’t have taken #fearlessfeminist Charlotte Proudman long to choose the best turn of phrase for her public scolding of Alexander Carter-Silk, the man who had the temerity to tell her that her LinkedIn profile picture looked ‘stunning’. In reaching for the word ‘unacceptable’, Proudman repeats the tip-of-the-tongue buzzword of today’s unappointed language police.

Earlier this summer, when Sir Tim Hunt made his now infamous joke about women in labs, his colleague and Nobel Prize co-winner, Sir Paul Nurse, led the stampede, declaring such remarks to be ‘not acceptable’. Channel 4 newsreader turned arbiter on all things feminist, Cathy Newman, suggested ‘he should keep his “girl trouble” to himself in future, to send a message that sexism is just as unacceptable as racism’. Back in January, former soap star Ken Morley was hoisted off Celebrity Big Brother after he was deemed to have used ‘unacceptable and offensive language’.

Unsurprisingly, this rush to label words – and, let’s be honest, the people who utter them – as ‘unacceptable’ breeds within universities. At Washington State University, cultural studies students risk failure if they use words their lecturer has decided are ‘unacceptable’. The list of outlawed expressions includes ‘the words “males” and “females” to refer to men and women’. Students studying women’s studies at North Carolina State University have been told they will be marked down for using ‘unacceptable’ vocabulary such as ‘mankind’ in their essays.

At students’ unions throughout the UK, Safe Space policies warn members of the need to ‘be aware of the connotations of your language’. At Goldsmiths, part of the University of London, ‘racism, homophobia, biphobia, sexism, transphobia, disablism or prejudice based on age, ethnicity, nationality, class, gender, gender presentation, language ability, immigration status or religious affiliation is unacceptable’. Students must not ‘make assumptions about anyone’s gender, pronouns, sexual preference, abilities, ethnic identity, survivor status, or life experiences’. For those wanting to remain within the limits of acceptability, conversation must be very difficult indeed.

Describing the words someone uses as ‘unacceptable’ can appear politically neutral, unemotive and simply commonsense. It allows the speaker to take the moral highground by suggesting there are ways of speaking and behaving that all right-thinking people agree upon. Those whose words are labelled ‘unacceptable’ are deemed to have crossed a line and committed a transgression against such normal codes of decency and politeness. As we have seen with Charlotte Proudman’s calling-out of the supposedly sexist solicitor, and all those who rushed to decry Tim Hunt’s joke, the biggest infringement against the acceptable is to commit speech crimes against feminism. The feminist war on unacceptable language now encompasses everything from jokes and compliments to mildly flirtatious comments.

The roots of this obsession with policing language began at least as far back as the 1980s. A social constructionist view of gender as performative rather than biological met an emerging postmodernism that assumed discourse constructs not just perceptions of reality but reality itself. This led feminist theorists, such as Julia Kristeva, to argue that it is language that constructs power relations and the conditions for oppression.

According to this view, women’s oppression could be challenged by changing the language and images through which people constructed the world. Today, when young women are seemingly quicker than ever to declare themselves victims of everyday sexism and casual misogyny, the notion that words are pre-eminently important in shaping reality has remained. Only now it has been joined by the notion that language can inflict mental harm on women, who are seen as vulnerable to everything from adverts on the Tube to clapping.

Offending words are now found everywhere. According to modern feminists, exposing them simultaneously challenges sexism and, perhaps more importantly, confirms that it still exists. The importance of language is overstated at the same time as the capacity of women, as autonomous individuals capable of taking responsibility and making independent choices about their own lives, is played down. This leads to an increase in what Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge, writing in Professing Feminism, have termed ‘ideological policing’, both inside and outside of universities. Modern-day feminists have much in common with their bourgeois Victorian fore-sisters, whom Patai and Koertge suggest saw it as their job ‘to monitor language and enforce norms’ of what was socially acceptable.

Today’s constant calling-out of what is considered unacceptable to feminist sensibilities is a demand to censor language deemed threatening to women – who are presented as a homogenous and vulnerable group. It is a patronising way for a recently emergent social elite to dictate who gets to be heard as they enforce new values, social norms and codes of conduct. This is why the cry of ‘unacceptable’ is most often used against a generation of older white men whose very existence is a sin against the new etiquette.

The phrase ‘this is unacceptable’ was made famous a decade ago by television’s self-described Supernanny, Jo Frost. Frost’s parenting programme centred on the advice: ‘It’s important to give your child boundaries and let them know that certain behaviour is unacceptable.’ Weekly plotlines all revolved around parents being taught how to look their child in the eyes, point a finger and declare ‘That is unacceptable!’. Duly reprimanded, the guilty child would be sent to sit on a naughty step until they were prepared to proffer an apology for their misdemeanours. At this point, parent and child would hug and all was forgiven. Today’s feminists prefer to punish unacceptable behaviour through Twitter-led public humiliation rather than naughty steps. But the narrative arc of crying ‘unacceptable!’, followed by punishment, apologies and, occasionally, redemption, is all too familiar.

We need to stand up to the supernanny feminists before more careers and lives are ruined. The idea that young women are victims of a patriarchy that conspires to keep them low paid, powerless, objectified, sexually harassed and out of the top jobs is ludicrous. The idea that women are offended and their sense of self-worth shattered by jokes and compliments is far more demeaning than any unwanted flirtation. It’s time to turn the tables and call out the unappointed coterie who take it upon themselves to tell the rest of us what is and isn’t acceptable. And if we really want to police language, let’s start with the overused and ill-defined word, ‘misogyny’.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

Background

The most beautiful woman in the world? I think she was. Yes: It's Agnetha Fältskog

A beautiful baby is king -- with blue eyes, blond hair and white skin. How incorrect can you get?

Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair

Enough said

A face of Leftist hate: Cory Booker, (D-NJ)

There really is an actress named Donna Air. She seems a pleasant enough woman, though

What feminism has wrought:

There's actually some wisdom there. The dreamy lady says she is holding out for someone who meets her standards. The other lady reasonably replies "There's nobody there". Standards can be unrealistically high and feminists have laboured mightily to make them so

Some bright spark occasionally decides that Leftism is feminine and conservatism is masculine. That totally misses the point. If true, how come the vote in American presidential elections usually shows something close to a 50/50 split between men and women? And in the 2016 Presidential election, Trump won 53 percent of white women, despite allegations focused on his past treatment of some women.

Political correctness is Fascism pretending to be manners

Political Correctness is as big a threat to free speech as Communism and Fascism. All 3 were/are socialist.

The problem with minorities is not race but culture. For instance, many American black males fit in well with the majority culture. They go to college, work legally for their living, marry and support the mother of their children, go to church, abstain from crime and are considerate towards others. Who could reasonably object to such people? It is people who subscribe to minority cultures -- black, Latino or Muslim -- who can give rise to concern. If antisocial attitudes and/or behaviour become pervasive among a group, however, policies may reasonably devised to deal with that group as a whole

Black lives DON'T matter -- to other blacks. The leading cause of death among young black males is attack by other young black males

Leftist logic: There are allegedly no distinctions between groups of humans, yet we're still supposed to celebrate diversity.

Identity politics is a form of racism

'White Privilege'. .. Oh yes. .. That was abundant in the Irish potato famines. ... And in the Scottish Highland Clearances. ...And in transportations to Australia. ... And in Workhouses. ... 'White privilege' was absolutely RIFE!

Psychological defence mechanisms such as projection play a large part in Leftist thinking and discourse. So their frantic search for evil in the words and deeds of others is easily understandable. The evil is in themselves. Leftist motivations are fundamentally Fascist. They want to "fundamentally transform" the lives of their fellow citizens, which is as authoritarian as you can get. We saw where it led in Russia and China. The "compassion" that Leftists parade is just a cloak for their ghastly real motivations

Occasionally I put up on this blog complaints about the privileged position of homosexuals in today's world. I look forward to the day when the pendulum swings back and homosexuals are treated as equals before the law. To a simple Leftist mind, that makes me "homophobic", even though I have no fear of any kind of homosexuals.

But I thought it might be useful for me to point out a few things. For a start, I am not unwise enough to say that some of my best friends are homosexual. None are, in fact. Though there are two homosexuals in my normal social circle whom I get on well with and whom I think well of.

Of possible relevance: My late sister was a homosexual; I loved Liberace's sense of humour and I thought that Robert Helpmann was marvellous as Don Quixote in the Nureyev ballet of that name.

One may say that the person who gets in trouble with drugs is just as dumb without them

I record on this blog many examples of negligent, inefficient and reprehensible behaviour on the part of British police. After 13 years of Labour party rule they have become highly politicized, with values that reflect the demands made on them by the political Left rather than than what the community expects of them. They have become lazy and cowardly and avoid dealing with real crime wherever possible -- preferring instead to harass normal decent people for minor infractions -- particularly offences against political correctness. They are an excellent example of the destruction that can be brought about by Leftist meddling.

I also record on this blog much social worker evil -- particularly British social worker evil. The evil is neither negligent nor random. It follows exactly the pattern you would expect from the Marxist-oriented indoctrination they get in social work school -- where the middle class is seen as the enemy and the underclass is seen as virtuous. So social workers are lightning fast to take children away from normal decent parents on the basis of of minor or imaginary infractions while turning a blind eye to gross child abuse by the underclass

The genetics of crime: I have been pointing out for some time the evidence that there is a substantial genetic element in criminality. Some people are born bad. See here, here, here, here (DOI: 10.1111/jcpp.12581) and here, for instance"

Gender is a property of words, not of people. Using it otherwise is just another politically correct distortion -- though not as pernicious as calling racial discrimination "Affirmative action"

Postmodernism is fundamentally frivolous. Postmodernists routinely condemn racism and intolerance as wrong but then say that there is no such thing as right and wrong. They are clearly not being serious. Either they do not really believe in moral nihilism or they believe that racism cannot be condemned!

Postmodernism is in fact just a tantrum. Post-Soviet reality in particular suits Leftists so badly that their response is to deny that reality exists. That they can be so dishonest, however, simply shows how psychopathic they are.

So why do Leftists say "There is no such thing as right and wrong" when backed into a rhetorical corner? They say it because that is the predominant conclusion of analytic philosophers. And, as Keynes said: "Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back”

Juergen Habermas, a veteran leftist German philosopher stunned his admirers not long ago by proclaiming, "Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [than Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter."

Consider two "jokes" below:

Q. "Why are Leftists always standing up for blacks and homosexuals?

A. Because for all three groups their only God is their penis"

Pretty offensive, right? So consider this one:

Q. "Why are evangelical Christians like the Taliban?

A. They are both religious fundamentalists"

The latter "joke" is not a joke at all, of course. It is a comparison routinely touted by Leftists. Both "jokes" are greatly offensive and unfair to the parties targeted but one gets a pass without question while the other would bring great wrath on the head of anyone uttering it. Why? Because political correctness is in fact just Leftist bigotry. Bigotry is unfairly favouring one or more groups of people over others -- usually justified as "truth".

One of my more amusing memories is from the time when the Soviet Union still existed and I was teaching sociology in a major Australian university. On one memorable occasion, we had a representative of the Soviet Womens' organization visit us -- a stout and heavily made-up lady of mature years. When she was ushered into our conference room, she was greeted with something like adulation by the local Marxists. In question time after her talk, however, someone asked her how homosexuals were treated in the USSR. She replied: "We don't have any. That was before the revolution". The consternation and confusion that produced among my Leftist colleagues was hilarious to behold and still lives vividly in my memory. The more things change, the more they remain the same, however. In Sept. 2007 President Ahmadinejad told Columbia university that there are no homosexuals in Iran.

It is widely agreed (with mainly Lesbians dissenting) that boys need their fathers. What needs much wider recognition is that girls need their fathers too. The relationship between a "Daddy's girl" and her father is perhaps the most beautiful human relationship there is. It can help give the girl concerned inner strength for the rest of her life.

A modern feminist complains: "We are so far from “having it all” that “we barely even have a slice of the pie, which we probably baked ourselves while sobbing into the pastry at 4am”."

Patriotism does NOT in general go with hostilty towards others. See e.g. here and here and even here ("Ethnocentrism and Xenophobia: A Cross-Cultural Study" by anthropologist Elizabeth Cashdan. In Current Anthropology Vol. 42, No. 5, December 2001).

The love of bureaucracy is very Leftist and hence "correct". Who said this? "Account must be taken of every single article, every pound of grain, because what socialism implies above all is keeping account of everything". It was V.I. Lenin

"An objection I hear frequently is: ‘Why should we tolerate intolerance?’ The assumption is that tolerating views that you don’t agree with is like a gift, an act of kindness. It suggests we’re doing people a favour by tolerating their view. My argument is that tolerance is vital to us, to you and I, because it’s actually the presupposition of all our freedoms. You cannot be free in any meaningful sense unless there is a recognition that we are free to act on our beliefs, we’re free to think what we want and express ourselves freely. Unless we have that freedom, all those other freedoms that we have on paper mean nothing" -- SOURCE

Although it is a popular traditional chant, the "Kol Nidre" should be abandoned by modern Jewish congregations. It was totally understandable where it originated in the Middle Ages but is morally obnoxious in the modern world and vivid "proof" of all sorts of antisemitic stereotypes

What the Bible says about homosexuality:

"Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; It is abomination" -- Lev. 18:22

In his great diatribe against the pagan Romans, the apostle Paul included homosexuality among their sins:

"For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.... Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them" -- Romans 1:26,27,32.

So churches that condone homosexuality are clearly post-Christian

Although I am an atheist, I have great respect for the wisdom of ancient times as collected in the Bible. And its condemnation of homosexuality makes considerable sense to me. In an era when family values are under constant assault, such a return to the basics could be helpful. Nonetheless, I approve of St. Paul's advice in the second chapter of his epistle to the Romans that it is for God to punish them, not us. In secular terms, homosexuality between consenting adults in private should not be penalized but nor should it be promoted or praised. In Christian terms, "Gay pride" is of the Devil

The homosexuals of Gibeah (Judges 19 & 20) set in train a series of events which brought down great wrath and destruction on their tribe. The tribe of Benjamin was almost wiped out when it would not disown its homosexuals. Are we seeing a related process in the woes presently being experienced by the amoral Western world? Note that there was one Western country that was not affected by the global financial crisis and subsequently had no debt problems: Australia. In September 2012 the Australian federal parliament considered a bill to implement homosexual marriage. It was rejected by a large majority -- including members from both major political parties. The tide turned in 2017, however, with a public vote authorizing homosexual marriage in Australia

Religion is deeply human. The recent discoveries at Gobekli Tepe suggest that it was religion not farming that gave birth to civilization. Early civilizations were at any rate all very religious. Atheism is mainly a very modern development and is even now very much a minority opinion

"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" - Isaiah 5:20 (KJV)

I think it's not unreasonable to see Islam as the religion of the Devil. Any religion that loves death or leads to parents rejoicing when their children blow themselves up is surely of the Devil -- however you conceive of the Devil. Whether he is a man in a red suit with horns and a tail, a fallen spirit being, or simply the evil side of human nature hardly matters. In all cases Islam is clearly anti-life and only the Devil or his disciples could rejoice in that.

And there surely could be few lower forms of human behaviour than to give abuse and harm in return for help. The compassionate practices of countries with Christian traditions have led many such countries to give a new home to Muslim refugees and seekers after a better life. It's basic humanity that such kindness should attract gratitude and appreciation. But do Muslims appreciate it? They most commonly show contempt for the countries and societies concerned. That's another sign of Satanic influence.

And how's this for demonic thinking?: "Asian father whose daughter drowned in Dubai sea 'stopped lifeguards from saving her because he didn't want her touched and dishonoured by strange men'

Islamic terrorism isn’t a perversion of Islam. It’s the implementation of Islam. It is not a religion of the persecuted, but the persecutors. Its theology is violent supremacism.

And where Muslims tell us that they love death, the great Christian celebration is of the birth of a baby -- the monogenes theos (only begotten god) as John 1:18 describes it in the original Greek -- Christmas!

No wonder so many Muslims are hostile and angry. They have little companionship from women and not even any companionship from dogs -- which are emotionally important in most other cultures. Dogs are "unclean"

On all my blogs, I express my view of what is important primarily by the readings that I select for posting. I do however on occasions add personal comments in italicized form at the beginning of an article.

I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.

I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!

Germaine Greer is a stupid old Harpy who is notable only for the depth and extent of her hatreds

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)

Note: If the link to one of my articles is not working, the article concerned can generally be viewed by prefixing to the filename the following: http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/42197/20121106-1520/jonjayray.comuv.com/

NOTE: The archives provided by blogspot below are rather inconvenient. They break each month up into small bits. If you want to scan whole months at a time, the backup archives will suit better. See here or here